The Beginning of Forever
by nickyjay
Summary: Set three months after Selene and Michael's fight with Viktor. They are in London when their luck runs out and their pursuers find them. Rating will go up. Tweaked since first submitted, coz it's never perfect.


**The Beginning of Forever**

**Author's note: **Disclaimer – characters/premise are not mine, may the powers that be continue to let me play with them.

_On the story_.  This is the chapter that lays some of the foundation for what comes later.  So it's character development stuff, not a lot of action and a lot of inner monologues.  Sorry if it's hard work, but the pace picks up in the next chapter.  I feel it's only fair to warn you now that I'm not a fast writer.  I try to get something up every month, and usually I manage it in a shorter timeframe than that, but life gets in the way at times.

_On the soundtrack_.  I can't imagine it without one, so I decided to include music suggestions that fit the mood and the headspace of the characters when I have it.  This is the interactive part of the story, and I really would like to hear what others think would work.  I love finding new music – and I'm not fussy about genre either – so feel free to make any suggestions you think fit the mood.  I will include them in chapter updates.  However, I am only going to put the soundtrack suggestions at the end of the chapter because sometimes the lyrics contain spoilers.  Oh, and the title comes from line in a Portishead song which will show up in the background in a later chapter. 

**Chapter One**

_The house was dark, silent, and reeked of blood.  Two bodies lay in the front garden, bathed in moonlight that turned the gore around them black and their skin silver in death.  There was another body in the hall, nothing more than a darker shadow among the shadows there.  She didn't even want to think of what lay inside the room opposite her own, the small bodies stiffening in the twin beds, side by side among sheets dappled with their blood.  And she, bizarrely spared, standing in a house that now belonged to the dead and swarmed with their ghosts.  Already she felt disconnected, as though she could hardly remember what it was to have felt such emotions as joy, hope, or love.  Memories cut at her mind and she forced herself to face the truth, look at the bodies and know what had been done to the ones she had loved.  She contemplated a cold, dark future and what she would spend it doing to those who had taken her family from her.  She would become their avenging angel, she told herself, though her soul be damned for it._

_Turning away from the window, she crossed the room to the mirror that stood above the vanity table, afraid and yet fascinated to know whether the change might be seen on her body.  Everything felt different, sharper somehow, and she knew that she was more powerful than she had ever been.  Physical strength was not something she had ever enjoyed as a woman, and it was exhilarating and a little frightening at the same time.  _

_It was a little disappointing that there was nothing in the image staring back at her to indicate the profound way her world had changed.  Her skin was paler perhaps, but that could well be the blood loss.  She flinched at that thought, and pushed her hair back from her throat to reveal the two puncture wounds on her neck.  They were healing already, but the memory of how she had received them would not.  She had fought him of course, mad with rage and grief, struggling futilely against a strength utterly beyond her own but refusing to give in.  When she'd finally been forced to through sheer exhaustion, he'd held her and murmured soothing words, telling her he meant no harm, that she would be safe now, protected.  She'd even begun to believe him, until he'd moved with the speed of a striking snake and sunk his teeth into her throat.  She remembered the pain and the keen sense of betrayal at the thought that she, like all her family, would die in the arms of this inhuman monster.  Then there had been nothing._

_She'd never expected to wake again.  But she had, and he'd been holding her.  He'd explained everything to her then, what had happened to her family and how he had reached the house just in time to save her life.  He explained that he'd made it possible for her to avenge the death of her family and that he'd given her a new life now, as one of his children, his people.  A vampire.  Her confusion and disbelief had been swept aside when he calmly took a blade and cut his wrist so that the blood flowed freely before pressing the wound to her mouth.  Brief disgust had been overwhelmed with a sudden, violently predatory instinct, and she'd taken her first drink of living blood from her sire._

_She studied her image in the mirror and decided that something had changed.  All evidence of the carefree, trusting girl she had been before this night had been wiped from her face.  Horror and grief had taken her innocence as swiftly as death had taken her family.  Selene felt no sorrow at the loss, knowing there was no place for such indulgences in this world.  Silently she vowed that however long it took, whatever sacrifice was demanded, she would not rest until she had sent every last lycan to hell where they belonged.  _

_There was a movement behind her in the shadows, and a figure appeared, stepping into the moonlight.  Viktor smiled at her reflection in the mirror and placed his hand on her shoulder._

Michael woke with a start, almost falling off his chair and choking back the warning he'd nearly shouted aloud.  Heart racing, he forced himself to take deep, slow breaths to calm down.  _It's a memory, _he told himself_._  _Viktor's dead, Selene killed him.  You're just dreaming her memories._  But hell it had given him a fright to see that face again, and the pain had felt so real….

Automatically he checked to his right, through the doorway into the small room where Selene slept.  She lay with her back to him, the curve of one shoulder visible where the blanket had slipped down.  Michael closed his eyes for a second in relief before cursing himself for being stupid enough to doze off. He was supposed to keep watch during the day while Selene slept, which he did usually without any difficulty.  Since his Change he found he hardly needed any sleep, but Selene still needed a good five or six hours a day.  Michael knew she didn't like leaving him in charge because of his lack of experience, but they had little choice.  There was no way that nearly two centuries of knowledge could be conveyed in little more than three months, a fact that had just been made clear to him yet again. Falling asleep on watch was an amateur's mistake.  

Rubbing his face to clear the last of the dream from his mind, Michael studied Selene while she slept and his relief was quickly overwhelmed by another discomfort.  _Why must she always sleep in the nude?  _He wondered desperately.  _Does she have no idea what it does to me?_  Apparently she didn't, or she didn't care.  It had been three months since their escape.  Three months on the run with no-one else for companionship, and yet that first day when he'd held her until she'd fallen asleep had been the last time she'd allowed him that close.  Since then, she had withdrawn almost completely, spending most of her time in silent thought and speaking to him only when she needed to.  Whenever he touched her in anything other than necessity, she pulled away, refusing even the simplest physical comfort.  Michael had eventually stopped trying, not liking the wary look in her eyes when he did.

The way she had closed herself off and turned inward frightened him more than anything else in this nightmare world they lived in.  Although Michael knew full well that he relied on Selene for his survival, that wasn't what scared him.  He wanted to survive, but he no longer knew whether Selene was existing out of habit or desire.  He watched her almost obsessively, afraid that in her deepening depression she would become careless and consequently dangerous to herself.  And he took care of the little things, like finding food and a place to stay by sunrise, things that she seemed unable or unwilling to think about.  Sometimes he caught her staring into space with such a blank, hopeless look in her eyes that he dreaded leaving her alone, even if she wouldn't tolerate him too close.  At least when he was there he knew she was safe.  If he wasn't and anything happened….  

Michael cut off that fruitless line of thought and checked the time.  After six, which meant he'd better get going soon.  He got up and went over to stand by the doorway, knowing he had to wake her up and not wanting to just yet.  It took little to persuade him to stand there watching her, indulging himself in that if nothing else.  

Selene lay on the makeshift bed, staring at the wall as her mind turned in its usual circle of thoughts. She'd been awake for some time, but remained still so that Michael wouldn't know it.  Every time she woke up, there were a few seconds when she expected to be in her bed in the mansion, to see her room and the window out onto the grounds.  Every time, she had to remind herself why it was that she had left all that behind, and inevitably that lead to the question she couldn't answer.  It had been plaguing her for months now, always there at the edge of her mind and appearing suddenly when she least expected it.  _What am I?_  

Selene didn't know.  A few months ago, she could have answered without hesitation. She had been a Death Dealer, a warrior in the Great War between lycans and vampires, a champion of her people.  Before that she had been a daughter and a sister, loved by her family.  Now, she was none of those things.  She was beginning to wonder if she had ever known what she was without them.  Surely her worth could not only have been measured by others, by the role they'd assigned to her, by her obedience to their wishes? Where had she been in all of that?  She must have made the decision to become what they wanted of her.  Some part of her must have chosen that life and believed in that vision, but now, for all her searching, Selene could not pinpoint exactly when it had happened or when she'd subsumed everything she was to the cause.  Now that the cause was gone, she'd lost her sense of who she was.

She heard Michael come to the doorway and knew it must be time for him to leave, but he didn't come in right away.  Selene knew that he watched her, she could feel it.  The sensation was disconcerting, and she had to admit that this was because she liked it.  But it had been so long since she'd allowed anyone as close to her as Michael had become.  She'd subsumed that part of her to the cause too, something someone who hadn't lived as part of a fighting unit in a war zone could not understand.  Relationships with her fellow Death Dealers had often been intense, a kind of intimacy experienced only between those who literally relied on each other for their lives day in and day out, who watched their comrades die violently time and time again and had to learn to push that aside, close ranks and keep fighting.  She had made the mistake once, when she was new to the coven and the war, of allowing that intimacy to carry over into a physical relationship.  It had been a brief, intense affair, fuelled as much by their mutual commitment to the cause as physical attraction.  He had been killed not much later, and Selene had learned her lesson.  Since then, she had kept her relationships with other vampires strictly platonic.  It was the only way to avoid despair.

But there had been times – more often of late – when she'd felt an aching loneliness.  Times when she'd even briefly considered taking the risk of something more.  She did not know what it was that had prompted this change of heart.  Perhaps it was the fact that she was approaching her third century as a vampire, and somewhere at the back of her mind she knew that her tenure as a Death Dealer was coming to an end.  For a time it had looked as though the war with the lycans was drawing to a close, and she had wondered what her life would be like once it was over.  She couldn't imagine doing anything but what she did.  It was what she had lived for for nearly two centuries.  What had driven other vampires, those who chose not to fight, had been a mystery to her.  In lives that spanned centuries, the endless intrigues and betrayals, loves and hates, passions and politics had seemed sickeningly indulgent and utterly pointless.  It was her very lack of interest in such matters that had lead to her being so thoroughly used.  If she had taken the time to involve herself more closely in the politics of the vampire nation, perhaps she would have learned the truth about Viktor and the war much sooner. 

Michael shifted, and Selene knew he was coming into the room.  Usually he would say her name from the doorway, but this time he had chosen to come closer, perhaps touch her.  She felt an irrational surge of panic at the thought and quickly sat up. Michael stopped short and looked away in a hurry.  He cleared his throat, flushing with embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I thought you were asleep," he said awkwardly.  "I have to go to work."

Selene looked at him standing there with his arms folded and a guilty expression on his face and tucked the blanket up under her arms so that he would stop acting so stupidly.  "Alright," she said.  It puzzled her that he was so uncomfortable about her sleeping naked.  She'd spent too many years living like a soldier to give a damn about what her body looked like so long as it was working as it should.  For Heaven's sake, she thought, the man was training to be a doctor, what was his problem?

Michael looked up, meeting her stare.  "Are you alright?" he asked quietly.

She frowned at him.  "I'm fine.  Go, you'll be late."

"You need to eat.  I bought something this morning from the butcher."  He turned quickly and disappeared out the door, returning a moment later carrying a packet with a glass jar filled with thickening blood.  He handed it to her and she took it without enthusiasm.  The lack of fresh food had been one of the hardest things for her to come to terms with.  She glanced up at him, "What did they say when you asked for it?"

He shrugged one shoulder.  "Nothing. They didn't seem to give a damn."

Selene unscrewed the lid and sniffed.  Day-old pig's blood.  Her stomach clenched, and she put the lid back on.  "I'll have some later."

"You need to eat," he repeated, frowning.  

"I will, later," she said, meeting his stare and holding it until he dropped the subject and asked instead, "Are you going to go out tonight?"

Selene didn't answer right away.  She knew that Michael was worried about her and that it was important that he knew where she was and what she was supposed to be doing, but of late this constant need to know had become frustrating.  It reminded her too much of how close to the edge they were.  She shrugged one shoulder.  "I don't know," she answered honestly.

He stared at her, not happy about this but not saying anything.  After a moment he nodded.  "Alright.  Leave me a note if you do."

"Of course," she replied. 

He left then, shrugging into his jacket as he went out of the side door more as a concession to the rest of humanity than to the weather.  The late January cold didn't bother him, but he'd attract attention wearing nothing more than a T-shirt in it.  Selene saw that he had the gun tucked into his belt and that he checked the alleyway carefully before leaving the building as she had taught him. 

She sighed and relaxed a little now that he was gone.  Mostly she found it comforting to have him around, which made her realize how little she had really been alone before, even if she had often felt alone.  She'd fought, slept, and trained as part of a team, always conscious of her place within vampire society and her duty to fulfill the role she had taken on as Death Dealer.  Michael made no demands and expected nothing but what she could give him, and yet the responsibility she felt for keeping him safe and alive had become suffocating.  There were so many things he didn't know, things about warfare, about vampires and lycans, about which places were safe and which weren't that at times she despaired that she would ever be able to teach it all to him.  And she knew in her heart that it was only a matter of time before they were found.  When the moment came, if he died because of something she had failed to teach him….

Selene drew in a quick breath and stood up, cutting off that line of thought and occupying herself with getting dressed.  The warehouse might be sparse and cold, but one thing it did have was a working shower.  Whatever it had been used for before had required the workers to have somewhere to get cleaned up if they needed to, and Selene indulged in this small luxury for those who lived on the run as often as she could.  But when she stepped out of the shower and looked at the one small, cracked mirror on the wall, misted over with steam, her mind instantly went back to another mirror and her writing Viktor's name in the condensation, pleading for his help.  She looked away hastily, but the thought was already there in her mind.  _What did you make me, Viktor?  Without you, who am I? _Selene shook her head and quickly left the bathroom.

She made herself drink some of the blood, as much a concession to Michael as knowing that she needed to keep her strength up. It was all she could do to swallow, and she took only enough to keep her stomach from cramping. Then she was standing in the middle of the cavernously empty warehouse, wondering how to occupy herself for another eight hours until Michael came back.  

They had few possessions with them, but Selene made sure they always carried enough weapons to repel a lycan or vampire attack and practiced with them as often as their rootless existence allowed.  At least staying in one place for the last two weeks had given her an opportunity to concentrate on Michael's training.  While he was gone, she practiced herself, using the warehouse and its contents as an obstacle course.  A narrow walkway ran along two sides of the room to a storage space on the second level.  A staircase lead down to the ground on one side and on the other up to the roof, leading to a fire escape that Selene and Michael used as an entrance as often as not.  There were several pieces of rusty equipment cluttering up the floor space to make their workouts a little more challenging.  The area around the warehouse was mostly industrial, deserted during the evenings and with few enough people around during the day for the odd bit of target practice to go unnoticed.  Still, ammunition was expensive, and Selene decided to keep her eye in with throwing stars this night.  

It was strange being here in her old territory and yet hiding out like a fugitive.  London was so familiar to her after spending the last thirty years here that it had felt a bit like coming home, only it wasn't because she couldn't go to any of the places vampires might be.  Which was pretty much everywhere.  She had enjoyed her time here, first as a member of the Death Dealer coven and then as its leader.  She had believed in what she had been doing and had been utterly committed to the cause.  Now, she couldn't help wondering how many of those she'd worked with for so long had known about Viktor's lies.

As always, thinking about Viktor resulted in a surge of rage.  One of her throws went wide, the weapon pinging off the brick wall and spinning into the shadows.  Selene swore and went to find it, discovering that one of the blades had been bent.  Annoyed with herself, she switched to knives – which were a lot easier to replace – and set herself something a little more challenging in the hopes that it would keep her focused.  There was an old pulley system for lifting crates up to the second level storage.  She had rigged a dummy to it, and now she set it so that the dummy swung across the room while she used it for target practice.  

It took about ten minutes for her mind to wander back to Viktor.  A couple of the knives bounced off the dummy, and Selene snarled and paced the floor like a caged beast.  _Damn you to hell for haunting me, Viktor_, she thought.  _You should have killed me that night.  Why didn't you kill me?  Did you enjoy watching me grieve for my human family?  Did you enjoy knowing that I trusted you and believed your lies, that you could manipulate me and use me as you saw fit?  Did you ever believe that I might betray your trust as you betrayed mine?_  She stopped pacing and stared into the middle distance, her eyes wide with horror.  _Oh God, was that what you wanted?  To turn me into another version of you?_  And then an even more frightening thought occurred to her.  _Did you succeed?_

"No!" Barely even realizing she'd spoken aloud, Selene looked around frantically. The walls of the warehouse were like a prison, the few hours until Michael returned an eternity.  There was too much time to think, and she couldn't stay here and wait, not again.  She was used to going out and hunting down her enemy.  Running and hiding were not her style, and the necessity of it galled her.  Selene had had enough of watching from rooftops for any sign that the vampires or the lycans were on their trail.  She wanted purpose.  She wanted action.  She wanted something to kill. 

But two centuries of surviving this war had beaten into her the necessity of thinking before acting.  Taking several deep breaths, Selene started pacing again, trying to come up with a way that she could take the battle to the enemy, and in doing so take back a little of the initiative.  What she needed was find out what they knew, how close they were and what they were planning.  If she couldn't hunt – which she regretfully decided would be worse than foolish – then she could do the next best thing, which was a little reconnaissance.  As her mind ticked over what she would need to carry out her plan, she realized that she was thinking as though she was still part of a team.  Selene stopped pacing and frowned.  She was so used to having all the resources of the vampire nation at her fingertips that she'd never realized how reliant she had become on it.  Damn but it was difficult doing this alone.  She smiled to herself and murmured, "Back to the bad old days, girl, before telephones and computers and the internet.  You're going to have to do your own legwork."

For the first time in a long time, Selene felt a sudden thrill of anticipation.  She had a challenge again, one that she was uniquely capable of fulfilling.  If anyone could break into Ziodex Industries headquarters here in London – the global biopharmaceutical conglomerate owned and run by the vampires – it would be her.  It was dangerous, but Selene quickly convinced herself that there was no alternative.  The information she needed to know was there, she was sure of it.  All she needed to do was figure out how to get to it without being seen, and get out again without being followed.

Selene grabbed a small backpack and started to fill it with anything she thought she might need.  As she was about to head out the door, she remembered the note Michael had asked for and hesitated. She fully expected to be back before he was.  Then, annoyed with herself for considering leaving without telling him where she was going – what kind of example was that to set? – she scribbled a couple of lines and left the scrap of paper on the bed weighted down with a gun clip.  Seconds later, she was gone.  

**Soundtrack suggestions:**  Letting the Cables Sleep by Bush seemed to capture Michael's mood and thoughts almost perfectly.  I am sure I had this chapter in my head before I chose it, but the subconscious is a sneaky thing.  


End file.
